Under the Cover with Granger Larsen

Granger Larsen is a name you've heard before. He had an illustrious amateur career, capped by a runner-up performance to Nat Young two years ago at the NSSA Nationals. Since then he's been on the grind. Grinding away at points. Grinding away at travel. Grinding away on foreign dance floors. Grinding. During a week at home, he managed to slide into an Expression Session at the Billabong Pro Maui and managed to nail a cover shot, just in time for deadline. We caught up to him to find out about what your first SURFING Magazine cover is like.

SURFING Magazine: This is your first cover, what are you doing with it? Well since this is my first cover I'll probably frame it and put it on my wall. It's been one of my dreams to get a cover since I was young. So it's getting blown up big and hung up.

What's the story behind this shot?

It's a weird story. This shot was actually when I was in an Expression Session for the Girls WCT event they do at my home break on Maui. I live like five minutes away. The Expression Session was like 45 minutes and there was Taj Burrow, Wade Goodall, Dusty Payne, Rasta, Laurie Towner, and some other guys. The waves looked super fun and the sun was out and it looked good to get a good shot. I ended up doing a pretty good turn, and like five different photogs got the same turn, but from different angles. When I came in Tom Carey says to me “How's this shot I got?” I was pretty pumped on it. He told me he was going to send it in right away because that was the due date for the cover. Then somehow I ended up getting it.

Feel free to send beer to the San Clemente office. We'd be stoked.

[Laughs]

Now that you can tick a cover shot off your To-Do list, what are your next goals?Well this is my last year of being a Junior, so I am definitely going to go for the World Junior title. I am going to do a lot of the WQS' this year and I am going to try my best to qualify. After seeing Dusty Payne, one of my best friends that I grew up with, qualify it just makes me way hungrier to go for it.

With the Internet these days, does getting a cover still mean as much to the surfer as it did back in the day?

Getting the cover definitely means a lot still, especially to me. I've been wanting to get one for a while now and I'm super stoked to get it with SURFING.

Photos: Tom Carey

Watch the March 2010 Issue Trailer HERE along with all of the past issue trailers.